> What’s the relative cost of in-patient vs. out-patient care?
They're not directly comparable, because the care delivered is fundamentally different, but inpatient care is about two orders of magnitude more expensive.
That's not to say that reduction of inpatient care is always a goal, though, because it's only a good tradeoff when the outpatient care actually would provide equivalent or better clinical outcomes. Sometimes that's true, sometimes it's not.
They're not directly comparable, because the care delivered is fundamentally different, but inpatient care is about two orders of magnitude more expensive.
That's not to say that reduction of inpatient care is always a goal, though, because it's only a good tradeoff when the outpatient care actually would provide equivalent or better clinical outcomes. Sometimes that's true, sometimes it's not.